It's officially here, and the 70-200mm F2.8 equivalent focal length lens from Fujifilm is ready to rock the boat. All adventure, portrait and sport photographers have been eagerly awaiting this one, and we managed to get our grubby little hands on one early to figure out how it handles. Canon and Nikon have been producing the leading lens designs in this focal length for years and it is probably fair to say that every professional photographer has one of their own. We have never been the biggest fans of the zoom lens and have mostly kept our distance from the current Fujifilm zoom lens lineup. But the versatility of a high performance telephoto option from the underdog was too exciting to overlook and pass up. If first impressions are anything to go by, this lens is stiff competition for any prime lenses which fall in its wake. The first thing you notice when grabbing for the lens is its weight, it is not light by any definition of the word.......

On Saturday 26th July 2014 I travelled to Nottingham to attend a workshop run by local photographer Karl Bratby. The workshop was to be called “Shaping The Light” and be in his studio and based around learning to use natural and studio flash to get the most of of your images. A lot of the top professional photographers use only one light to create their images and when done correctly can produced stunning results and this is what Karl was going to be teaching us. Karl’s studio was absolutely amazing, based on the top floor of an old converted victorian factory it was surrounded by huge glass windows with oozes of light flooding in. If Carlsberg did studios then this is what they’d come up with. Along with myself there were 5 other photographers taking part in the day and after everyone had arrived and we had all made our introductions Karl put us to work. This wasn’t going to be one of those workshops were everything is set up for you and the model put in place and you just push the shutter, oh no right from the word go Karl asked us where we thought in the studio had the best natural light coming through and told us to grab some props and compose a scene.....
Via Thomas Menk, Simon Peckham

We spent the last couple of days gathering opinions about the camera on the left, the Olympus OM-D E-M1. Now how about the one on the right? Do you have one of those? (Not necessarily with the pictured lens.) Seems like it's been out long enough for owners to have formed opinions. If you are (or were) an owner, what do you think?
Via hpc

All of these portraits of my kids are straight out of the camera. I have not adjusted contrast or sharpness. This is what you get from an X-T1 and the 50-140mm f2.8. I will do a follow up post to show how great the shallow depth of field looks, but I wanted to get a review out as quick as possible and it’s been a dark grey weekend. This won’t be a technical review. You can find plenty of specs on the web if you need them. Specs are fine, but if they’re not engineered properly, they don’t mean a thing! It seems nobody told this lens that it’s not supposed to be as sharp as a prime. Come to think of it, nobody told Fuji that you can’t make a zoom that performs like a prime lens either. But I’m glad, because they have pulled it off. Click on any of the portrait shots to see a full size version on Flickr. Ok, so the shot above is sharp, very sharp. But look below and you will see that this is just a small crop of the original photo. Not only that, but as I said above, this is SOOC. These portraits of my kids were shot with the Fuji X-T1 and the new 50-140mm f2.8. With a full frame equivalent of 75-210mm, this is Fuji’s answer to the classic professional workhorse 70-200mm f2.8. Now I own a 70-200mm Nikon and it’s a fantastic lens (as is the Canon version). It’s the reason I’ve held on to my Nikon D800, because I need that 200mm reach for my jazz photography. Fuji’s other long zooms are too slow for what I need and my longest prime is the awesome 56mm f1.2. I’m looking forward to my next jazz shoot with an all Fuji setup!.........

“ I've had the X-E2 for 4 weeks now, and I've shot the Canon and Fuji side by side. In 4 out of 5 cases, I prefer the Fuji shots over my Canon, and that fact leaves me feeling excited and anxious”
Via Carlos C

On Saturday 26th July 2014 I travelled to Nottingham to attend a workshop run by local photographer Karl Bratby. The workshop was to be called “Shaping The Light” and be in his studio and based around learning to use natural and studio flash to get the most of of your images. A lot of the top professional photographers use only one light to create their images and when done correctly can produced stunning results and this is what Karl was going to be teaching us. Karl’s studio was absolutely amazing, based on the top floor of an old converted victorian factory it was surrounded by huge glass windows with oozes of light flooding in. If Carlsberg did studios then this is what they’d come up with. Along with myself there were 5 other photographers taking part in the day and after everyone had arrived and we had all made our introductions Karl put us to work. This wasn’t going to be one of those workshops were everything is set up for you and the model put in place and you just push the shutter, oh no right from the word go Karl asked us where we thought in the studio had the best natural light coming through and told us to grab some props and compose a scene.....
Via Thomas Menk, Simon Peckham

As I write this, there are a few cameras dotting the landscape of my desk, sitting idly, waiting to be used and tested. I know their makers, their stats, and each is a fine piece of engineering in its own right. I can see the numbers written on them denoting their names, but frankly, they could be a host of other cameras in their indifference. I won’t name them, but for the most part, they’ve got about as much character as the wine I’m drinking. Actually, scratch that, the wine is developed enough to star in its own novella. Their lacking, however, has reason; like Pacific Rim cars are tools created to prop up economies of developing countries, as a rival for the moped and mule, these were produced to be tools. They are very utilitarian, function over form, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s another camera which I’ve just recently parted with, that’s very, very different though......
Via Simon Peckham

Dance is one of the most brilliant and yet most difficult things to photograph well. It involves split second timing, precise technique and a deep understanding of your subject.So sometimes it is much better to throw away all the rules and try something completely new...!That is exactly what I did last month when I photographed dancers from Jive Nation at the Marylebone Summer Fayre in London. Right from the start I knew that I wasn't going to be satisfied with conventional "sharp" images - there were too many dancers in too small a space so it was impossible to isolate a subject. Instead I used a slow shutter speed technique of dragging the shutter by twisting the camera about the lens axis during the exposure. I first saw this demonstrated by Zack Arias at a GPP workshop last year and have been waiting for a good subject to try it out.
Via hpc

I shot my second wedding on Friday using just the fuji system. I can't show the results from the first wedding I shot with them as the bride and groom want to see the images before they let them out in the wild. But for the Friday wedding, I was second shooting and I know…

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